When a message is flagged for follow up in a message list view of a messaging application, associated messages (e.g. replies, follow-up messages etc.) often arrive before the original message is followed up/processed (e.g. viewed/replied to). Hence, the entire list of messages must be scanned to try to find the most recent message in the thread, thus reducing the value of flag for follow up, and increasing the amount of computing resources used in following up the original message.